Darkest Hour
by AriaAdagio
Summary: Post Last Knight. Survivors in the aftermath.


_**Author's Notes: This is my attempt to reconcile with Last Knight. It's not very happy, and it's probably the only time you'll ever see me acknowledge the existence of that last episode (or at least... the last five minutes).**_

* * *

She sighed softly as she entered her former home, her eyes sweeping across the scene before her with a tinge of regret. The memories had almost threatened to drown her when she'd placed her hand on the doorknob, but now, as she stood at the top of the steps, her mind was blank. In what once had been her sanctuary, there was no familiarity.

He'd changed it...

It was cold and it was dark. The usual glare of cool neon lights was absent, and Miklos was no longer there to welcome her with his enigmatic smile. But what most affected her was that it was empty. Empty and barren, except for where her former master sat silently at the bar, pondering the untouched wine goblet that sat in front of him as if it were the only object in existence.

She walked regally towards him with head held high, not letting her memories get the best of her, and sat beside him quietly, but he gave no indication that he was aware of her presence. "I felt something," she whispered softly, growing worried when he failed to move or acknowledge that she was there.

He just sat there, cold and still, like a statue. It was unnerving to see him like that, sitting there, staring that way.

"Is he..." She couldn't bring herself to finish. She did not want to confirm what she already knew, what she had already felt as sharply as a stab of sunlight through her chest...

Silence followed, so long and full that she doubted he had even heard her, so wrapped up was he in his brooding. But then, to her relief, he blinked and cleared his throat as if there were something caught in it.

"Yes," he replied with finality, his voice devoid of feeling as he continued to stare unblinking at the glass in front of him.

She swallowed thickly. It was as she had suspected, as she had feared. While she had wanted to deny it, to pass it off as her own overactive imagination, like a vicious slap in the face, she knew now that it had been foolish of her to think such thoughts.

Her crusader, her beautiful knight and former lover... was dead.

She waited for the pain to strike her, but it never came. Somehow, she could not bring herself to feel grief of any kind, only the beginnings of relief. It was over. All those years of pain and guilt, and it was finally over. For him, for her, for all those involved.

Her eternal companion was finally where he wanted to be, and she felt that she could be happy for that.

She placed a hand softly on his shoulder. "It is better this way," she said, trying to reassure him, but the tense muscles that were coiled tightly under his skin only stiffened more in response. As if her fingers had been met with an electric shock, she withdrew her hand quickly. He was unreadable and cold, the sardonic arrogance that she so often found reflected in his eyes absent, replaced by something darker. Anger? Pain? So well hidden, it was impossible for her to identify.

"That stubborn woman... She drove him down with her own foolish desires," he whispered bitterly, his eyes still staring expressionlessly ahead at some fascinating point in space that she would never be able to see. "I would kill her for it if she weren't already dead..." he added with a cynical laugh, but it sounded hollow, even to her, and his words were clipped, forced.

"This has been coming for a while. We have both known..." She tried to reassure him, tried to tell him that it was all right, but as before, he was unwilling or unable to accept her aid.

"I killed him..." he responded darkly, his tone low, barely loud enough for her to hear. And yet, they were not words of sadness, or grief, or anything in particular. Just a statement. He could just have easily been telling her that the sky was black.

She gasped in response, feeling like she had been knocked back a foot as shock riddled through her. He had done it? Of all the deaths she knew were on his shoulders, she would never have expected this one to be among them, and yet, it seemed almost right, that he had put an end to the torment he had started.

"He asked me to, and I killed him. Ironically, death is probably the only thing I have ever given him without much resistance," he told her, sounding ridiculously analytical about the whole situation.

His odd tone chilled her. "Surely you tried to stop him..." she protested, taken aback by his bluntness, but he shook his head.

"A two-minute speech. That was all..." he replied, his face an adamantine mask of stone.

She could almost feel a flicker of something, a thing of immense proportions churning ominously underneath that unreadable stare, but was unable to make any sense of it before the walls slammed down viciously and all feeling was gone. She would have thought him to be in pain, perhaps even angry, but she had never before seen him so utterly detached. No matter what she had tried, the proverbial door was shut in her face. He was talking at her, not with her, and she was beginning to get the feeling that while it certainly seemed that way on the surface, this was not a conversation at all...

She knew it was his damned Roman stoicism, knew he would not permit himself to express himself, and still, it pained her that he was refusing her. He seemed... almost too cold. Was he allowing himself to grieve somewhere in that shell,  
or was he shut down completely, incapable of anything other than this terrible detachment? It disturbed her that she could not decide upon a definite answer.

"Then it was meant to be. You finally gave him what he wanted, to be free of you and me, and his immortal bonds. Has that not always been the struggle between the two of you?" she asked, trying to break through, just once trying to get him to extend a hand across that rift that was spreading wide between them like a canyon and touch her own straining fingertips. Just a touch, a brush of skin to skin, however fleeting.

But no hand was offered.

"Before, I always won," he said emotionlessly.

"He was never happy before," she responded, trying to get him to see what she did: that her crusader had finally been set free.

That this was for the best...

He looked at her briefly, catching her eyes for the first time that evening, and she found the effect of staring into those deep, pools of icy blue staggering, almost suffocating. "I know," he stated, even-toned, before looking back down at his glass. His index finger ran absently around the rim of the goblet, tracing an infinite, circular path.

She took a deep breath. "You thought you would be able to stop it," she replied with a nod, trying to evoke some discernible reaction. _Any_ reaction.

And to her surprise, she received one.

"He said I was his closest friend..." he whispered.

She gasped at the revelation, but quickly recomposed herself. "Then you should keep that memory with you and hold it close. You have always wanted it," she responded quietly, touched that her crusader had finally admitted, finally recognized the bond between master and child,  
although it saddened her that he had waited so long to mention it.

Her companion shook his head minutely. "But now it is too late."

She thought of _him_ then as she sat back, and her memories shifted to his golden locks, his angelic face, his infrequent, but entrancing, smile. A smile that had always contained an element of sadness in it, a hint of unrest. He had never been very happy.

Now, he was gone and... she would never see his smile again, except in her mind's eye where she knew it would reside for eternity. But this was how he had wanted it, she was sure, sure that he had been destined to be the first of their trio to let go of the earthly bonds that kept him firmly planted in his misery. He was not meant for eternity, and he never had been, but she had always refused to admit it until now.

"No. No, I do not think it is," she replied finally.

He looked up at her and for a brief moment, his eyes finally revealed the pain that he had been so valiantly hiding with his stony gaze. His lower lip twitched lightly as if a small bee had stung it before he threw his gaze back towards his goblet, back into an expressionless stare. It was the first time in the conversation that she'd seen him show even a flicker of emotion, some small indication that this whole ordeal had affected him in some way.

"He is happier now. I know it," she stated firmly, refusing to even contemplate the possibility that it was not true, that everything _he_ had believed when he was alive was a farce. Because he had believed it, and because he had fought so hard to retain that belief, she would believe it too.

His eyes widened, and he turned to look at her, the third time now that he had graced her with his gaze, though this time he was visibly affected by her words. "How can you say..."

"I know it," she interrupted, not allowing him to finish as she felt a spark of hope ignite in her chest at his astonishment.

"What kind of God would make him go through that to find happiness? How can you..." he spat, suddenly and visibly disgusted, but she placed an index finger on his lips to silence him, hoping against hope that he would believe her, and that he would accept what had happened as she did.

"Because he believed in it," she said truthfully.

His eyes glimmered a moment as he processed her words, and then went dark and cold--a truly ugly transformation. He said nothing in response.

The doors had slammed shut again.

"I _know_ it," she repeated, but even as she said it, she could feel the bridge that she'd been slowly building to his side of the rift, brick by brick, begin to crumble into dust. Her chance was gone, and his expressionless, impenetrable mask was back. Was his faith truly that far gone, so far that he couldn't even believe for the sake of someone he cared for?

The silence was her answer.

She sighed lightly. The sun was rising; it was time to go. Time to face what life would be like without _him_ in it. She brought herself down off the barstool and left without a word, leaving him to sit quietly by himself, as she was sure he would remain for quite some time.

No good-byes. There were never good-byes...

Briefly, she looked back at him sitting there silently, expressionlessly grieving. He would deal with it, eventually--he always did. But it would take him longer than he had ever managed before. And perhaps someday, when her crusader was just a memory, a faint glimmer in the back of his mind, they would cross paths again. But for now, it was obvious to her.

She had lost them both.

Taking one last glance at what used to be her home, she stepped out onto the pavement. The street was strangely silent and empty, as if someone were giving her the last few moments she would ever spend there alone to reminisce.

Glancing upwards, she noticed how clear the sky was, despite the fact that it was getting lighter. Every star was a spear of light, defying the glow of the vast city that surrounded her. She sighed, tilting her head back as a cold gust of wind blew through the quiet street, ruffling her brunette curls like a lover's touch.

"Farewell, my golden crusader. I hope you found what you were looking for," she whispered, and took off into the waning night.

THE END


End file.
